Tim Cook announced an updated version of the Apple TV today, able to support …

Tim Cook announced an updated version of the Apple TV today, able to support 1080p HD video and coming with increased compatibility for a variety of Apple offerings. The new Apple TV will be released next week on March 16 and is available for pre-order starting today at the same $99 price point as its predecessor.

Cook demonstrated the device's new interface and showed its picture improvement through a clip from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (The Artist must not have been available). While the interface still isn't iOS, it appears to be an upgrade over what was previously offered. The interface is now easier to navigate through an icon-based design, and it supports many of the familiar video options (YouTube, Netflix, Vimeo etc.).

The new Apple TV has gained compatibility with iTunes Match and AirPlay. Earlier in the event, Cook announced that iTunes would support 1080p and movies would be supported in iCloud. Now all those purchases are accessible across Apple devices (iPad, iPhone, TV, etc.) no matter what venue you purchase them from. Upload time between devices appeared rather quick in a demonstration that took place during the keynote. Additionally, with Apple TV working with AirPlay, iPhone 4S and iPad users can rely on its mirroring ability to stream Web content or any work done on these devices.

Among other features worth noting, Apple TV's work with Photostream was demoed. Photos from your iPhone will automatically become accessible via Apple TV (a characteristic available on the previous incarnation of Apple TV). The new interface also has a Genius button, so Apple can recommend content to you based on TV or movies you've watched. Cook eagerly showed off the new features before closing with the option to pre-order today, saying, "and I would encourage you to do that."

Despite rumors about an updated processor for the device, that was a noticeable absence from the Apple TV announcement. Updates: With the product page now live, the updated Apple TV runs on Apple's A5 processor as opposed to the A4 (thanks to Ars user, Bolero, for the tip). When Ars received some hands-on time later in the day, we learned this isn't the same A5 as the new iPad.

A reminder: Apple TV requires an 802.11g/n Wi-Fi or Ethernet network, a broadband Internet connection, an HD TV capable of 1080p or 720p, and an HDMI cable (which, naturally, is sold separately).

It would be nice to believe the UI will make it back to the 2, but it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't do it either :/

Meh, I jailbroke mine as soon as I bought it and installed XBMC. Far more content availability, and I can even stream stuff from my NAS box to the TV. Just think of it as an extremely cheap HTPC (in a sense).

@XxOmegaxX, @tuna_1 No word on Hulu, HBOGo, etc. from the press release, also noticeably absent from the interface displayed (see Gizmodo's observation at that point in their liveblog: http://live.gizmodo.com/page5.html). Hopefully confirmation comes out on this front.

I've never used an atom/ion...but it works great, for 720p content. ATV2 doesn't support 1080p output, but it just might playback the rip anyway, just downsampled to 720p. Some of my torture test playback files actually worked...though most didn't.

Is there a way to "point" it to a network share where I have a bunch of xvid shows?

The default firmware doesn't allow you to playback content stored on your network. If you jailbreak it, however, you can install XBMC and do exactly that. That's how I run my setup at home. RSS feeds to automatically download new episodes of shows to my network storage box, and then play them through XBMC (it shows up as an app) on the Apple TV. XBMC is nice in that it also downloads show and episode information (summaries, ratings, thumbnails, etc.).

As soon as XBMC is ported to this I'm going to buy one to replace my HTPC.

AppleTV 2 does support 802.11g over 5GHz. Strangely Apple's phones still do not. Not even the 4 or 4S support 5GHz... yet the FIRST GEN iPad does.

This has to do with needing an extra 5 GHz antenna on a small phone. As you can imagine the other devices (ipad, atv, imac, airport, etc) have room for the 5 GHz antennae. Apple has been fantastic about supporting 5 GHz wifi since 2008.

I wanna know what all the atv2 people are suppose to do since the store now says sd and 1080. No more hd content for atv2 people?

I jailbroke my Apple TV 2, and it can mostly handle 1080P MKVs even though it only outputs 720P. My guess is that Apple will encode the new 1080P videos so that they will still play on the Apple TV2 even though it'll only output 720P.

Is there a way to "point" it to a network share where I have a bunch of xvid shows?

The default firmware doesn't allow you to playback content stored on your network. If you jailbreak it, however, you can install XBMC and do exactly that. That's how I run my setup at home. RSS feeds to automatically download new episodes of shows to my network storage box, and then play them through XBMC (it shows up as an app) on the Apple TV. XBMC is nice in that it also downloads show and episode information (summaries, ratings, thumbnails, etc.).

Thanks for the info. So, if I were to jailbreak it (or an ATV2), could I still use Netflix and Hulu?

My current Apple TV already has AirPlay, and once jailbroken it is easy to point it to media shares, either using the lightweight ATVFlash media player, or XBMC. Plex works also. If the processor is basically the same, all of these will work on the new ATV as well, once jailbroken. And yes, Netflix and all other out of the box features continue to work.

At $99 this will only support content you buy from apple itself. this will be like the razor model, where you focus on making money on the "refills" of razor blades or TV/Movies (ie, disposable content) , not on the original item itself.

Is there a way to "point" it to a network share where I have a bunch of xvid shows?

The default firmware doesn't allow you to playback content stored on your network. If you jailbreak it, however, you can install XBMC and do exactly that. That's how I run my setup at home. RSS feeds to automatically download new episodes of shows to my network storage box, and then play them through XBMC (it shows up as an app) on the Apple TV. XBMC is nice in that it also downloads show and episode information (summaries, ratings, thumbnails, etc.).

Thanks for the info. So, if I were to jailbreak it (or an ATV2), could I still use Netflix and Hulu?

Beside AppleTV relatively low sales, I realize why they call it a hobby. I can't think of any other Apple product that has had these many interface changes. Their last change was a step back for us and its weird re-ordering of Movie Trailers. The labelling doesn't even make sense, it says 'In Theaters', but most of the trailers are for movies that aren't out yet.

Looking forward to trying the latest OS interface change. Just from seeing screen shots it looks like they are preparing of apps.